Capcom gets its claws into the UK

Capcom's rapid expansion into the West continues apace, now signing its first major development deal with a UK studio - Nottingham-based Monumental Games.

The team, which has offices in Nottingham, Manchester and India, will develop an as-yet unannounced multi-platform title to be published by Capcom this year.

Speaking to Develop late last year about the deal, Monumental CEO Rik Alexander said: "We're an online company; we're very big on online communities, and that's what we'll bring to this franchise."

The game will be the developer's first title on consoles - which was the reason it purchased Swordfish's Manchester studio earlier this year. “They’re one of the few developers in the world that have actually done Xbox Live SP,” said Alexander, explaining the process of taking Xbox Live from the common peer-to-peer connections to a server-based model.

“MMOs need a server because the clients can be hacked. Monumental Manchester is one of the few developers in the world that has solved this problem, they’ve been working on technology to facilitate that. It’ll help bring persistence into the world, and open up possibilities for meta-gaming.”

Speaking on its new approach to partnering with Western studios, Capcom's chief operating officer and president Haruhiro Tsujimoto said: "We will continue to supply game titles in this genre by collaborating with companies with an already established record for developing sport-related games."